Some of Nothing

Sometimes the Republic of Media Breaks My Brain
Thursday, July 3, 2008

So, the people who want out of the Iraq war the most are going to be supporters of Barack Obama, right? So, Barack Obama's supporters are going to be the ones who would be most concerned and knowledgeable about his stated intentions to get out of Iraq right? So, why is it Republicans and the media--and not Obama supporters, as far as I can tell--who are claiming that Obama has altered his stance on the war? I don't think it's changed. No one I've read today thinks it's changed. Wouldn't we be the ones who would know if it's changed since we're the ones most concerned about his position here? Shouldn't the media actually be asking the anti-war people whether or not they see a change in his position? Oh I forgot. We don't let the anti-war people talk to the media. We let Republicans complain about Obama's supposed shift in his Iraq position to the media on behalf of the anti-war people. How nice of them to hold Obama's feet to the fire for us like this!

When will our politics start to have some relationship with reality? Really, any relationship will do.

PS What part of, "We need to be as careful in getting out as we were careless in getting in," do people not understand? Seriously. Brain=broken.

UPDATE: Digby offers something more substantial than "brain=broken" on this subject. She's a better person than I am.

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Nothing New byslag at 9:48 PM 0 dispense karmic justice! (or just comment here)  

Damned Chinese Imports
Tuesday, July 1, 2008

Apparently, the US's free trade agreements extend to torture techniques:

WASHINGTON — The military trainers who came to Guantánamo Bay in December 2002 based an entire interrogation class on a chart showing the effects of “coercive management techniques” for possible use on prisoners, including “sleep deprivation,” “prolonged constraint,” and “exposure.”

What the trainers did not say, and may not have known, was that their chart had been copied verbatim from a 1957 Air Force study of Chinese Communist techniques used during the Korean War to obtain confessions, many of them false, from American prisoners. [emphasis mine]

U-S-A! U-S-A!...

Sometimes you just feel like you're living in a Lewis-Carroll-Washowski-Brothers-George-Orwell movie. When Alice Met Neorwell?

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Nothing New byslag at 11:18 PM 0 dispense karmic justice! (or just comment here)  

Karmic Justice on Behalf of Wes Clark

I'm with Brandon Freidman:

The bottom line is this: If Democrats tuck tail and run from Republicans in this instance, we run the risk of ceding authority on military issues to John McCain for the rest of the campaign. Whether you like Clark or not, everyone has an interest in defending him vigorously in this case. We cannot allow the Right and the media to get away with trashing the first guy to come out in prime time to slam McCain’s military "expertise." If our organizations don’t defend Clark as being right in this case, we give in to the idea that Republicans are the parents in terms of national defense, and Democrats are the children--something those on the Right will be more than happy to reinforce.

This idea that we can’t question someone’s expertise on military matters simply because they served could very easily become the next "whoever is against the war is unpatriotic" mantra. And that’s not something I’m prepared to accept.

So, after signing the VoteVets petition, I sent this email to MSNBC:

Every time I hear on your programs that General Clark is "attacking" McCain's military service, I have to laugh. Your characterization is absurd. Simply pointing out the fact that serving in a war doesn't necessarily make a person Commander-in-Chief material is clearly not attacking the war service. My father served in Vietnam and earned the Purple Heart and a lifetime of disability. And while he's a decent man who served his country honorably, I wouldn't trust him within a thousand feet of the presidency. Do you see the distinction?

I generally don't like to personalize this stuff, but sometimes, I'm too lazy to do otherwise. Also, a belated congrats to Vote Vets for getting the new GI Bill passed! In spite of a lack of vote (!) from Senator John McCain. But don't worry, John, no one's attacking your military service. Just your public service. Do you see the distinction?

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Nothing New byslag at 11:47 AM 4 dispense karmic justice! (or just comment here)  

Other People's Genius: Buried Alive Edition
Friday, June 27, 2008

In honor of the President potentially having legal authority to order someone to be buried alive, here are some of the stories I've been burying lately:

* John Cole wonders why the media ignores the House's torture inquisition:

What is surprising is that there is not more about this in the media. In fact, on the cable channels, there is nothing. Compare that to Rev. Wright’s Jackass tour at the NPR. One guy mocks the media, and we get our collective freak on for months. Addington and Yoo’s hands are all over much of the odious crap from this administration, come in and show thorough contempt for congress, and the media yawns.

Would this be for the same reason that the teevee news media almost completely ignores FISA? If so, I'm going with "laws schmaws" as the most likely response from our intrepid blown-dry news anchors.


* Juan Cole (a different kind of Cole) reminds us that there's a war going on:

Big bombs in Mosul and in Karma, al-Anbar.

Questions are being raised about whether the Iraqi army can hold Mosul.

DPA reports that two major bombings in Sunni Arab areas of Iraq on Thursday killed over 40 persons and left over 70 wounded.

Apparently, someone forgot to tell the Iraqis that the surge is working.


* Joe Sudbay at AMERICAblog reminds us that there's another war going on:

In Afghanistan, June is "deadliest month for foreign soldiers"
[...]
If my history serves me, we went to war in Afghanistan directly because of the 9/11 attacks. But, then Bush forgot about Afghanistan to launch the war against Iraq, which had nothing to do with the 9/11 attacks.

According to Joe, just forgetting about a war doesn't make it go away. Who knew?


* The Daily Show would probably call this video of N Korea blowing up one of their nuclear reactors your moment of zen:

Now, I don't want to name names, but it seems that this video is evidence that a certain President of the United States has been busy doing some serious appeasing lately.


Happy other people's genius Friday!

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Nothing New byslag at 3:51 PM 1 dispenses karmic justice! (or just comments here)  

The Moment Marc Ambinder Officially Became a Joke
Tuesday, June 24, 2008

So, I was just now listening to Rachel Maddow laugh uproariously at the fact that Richard Mellon Scaife's Pittsburgh Tribune-Review equated Obama's lead in the polls with Dukakis-level failure. Then, I clicked over to Marc Ambinder's blog only to see, "We're getting into Dukakis-Bush'-88 territory here...". When did Scaife purchase the Atlantic? Of course, there's this little detail: "(Reader CH notes: "The major difference between '88 and '08 is that the outgoing Republican president in '88 was nowhere near a 23% approval rating.")." Silly facts...they just get in the way of a good story.

And the joke only gets funnier with this ridiculous poll that Ambinder posted:
I wonder if the questions in this poll are representative of those Marc would have asked before we invaded Iraq:

Are you in favor of invading Iraq, or are you opposed to invading because you're a terrorist-loving hippie?

Just curious.

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Nothing New byslag at 6:50 PM 2 dispense karmic justice! (or just comment here)  

Speaking of Liars...
Sunday, June 8, 2008

I sometimes get comments on this blog from right wingers reviling Barack Obama for supposedly making a comment that they perceive to be a lie. Now, I'm all fine and good with calling out people for making overtly incorrect statements, should they actually do so. But when the same right wingers go on to extol the virtues of Still President Bush, I honestly can't say that I truly understand where they're coming from. Let's look at Friday's WaPo article about the lead up to the Iraq War for example:

President Bush and top administration officials repeatedly exaggerated what they knew about Iraq's weapons and its ties to terrorist groups as the White House pressed its case for war against Iraq, the Senate intelligence committee said yesterday in a long-awaited report.

While most of the administration's prewar claims about Iraq reflected now-discredited U.S. intelligence reports, the White House crossed a line by conveying certainty about the threat that Saddam Hussein posed to the United States, according to the report, approved over the objections of most of the committee's Republican members.

"In making the case for war, the administration repeatedly presented intelligence as fact when it was unsubstantiated, contradicted or even nonexistent," Sen. John D. Rockefeller IV (D-W.Va.), the committee chairman, said at a news conference. "As a result, the American people were led to believe that the threat from Iraq was much greater than actually existed."

I haven't posted on this Senate Intelligence committee report until now simply for the reason that it basically confirms old news. No one's surprised that Still President Bush was jonesing for war from day one and wasn't entirely forthcoming with facts as a result. Hell, back in 2006, people were posting Zork ripoffs about what was already an old joke by that time:

Iraqi Invasion: A Text Misadventure
Revision 88 / Serial number 54892

Oval Office
You are standing inside a White House, having just been elected to the presidency of the United States. You knew Scalia would pull through for you.

There is a large desk here, along with a few chairs and couches. The presidential seal is in the middle of the room and there is a full-length mirror upon the wall.

What do you want to do now?

> INVADE IRAQ
You are not able to do that, yet.

> LOOK MIRROR
Self-reflection is not your strong suit.

> PET SEAL
It's not that kind of seal.[...]

But at some point, we need to move beyond the "I told you so"s to figure out what we're going to do to fix the problem that we've created. I mean, these little deceptions are all fun and games until somebody (or A LOT of somebodies) gets killed; nonetheless, some questions remain. First, how do we get people to actually recognize what is and isn't a lie and how different lies can have vastly different effects? Second, how do we get Bush-lovers to actually look in the mirror? Upon reflection, maybe those are the same question.

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Nothing New byslag at 10:45 AM 3 dispense karmic justice! (or just comment here)  

Good News!
Sunday, June 1, 2008

We've won in Iraq!

Can we leave now? Before more of this happens? And while we're at it, can we stop doing this? Pretty please?

Time to go home.

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Nothing New byslag at 12:10 PM 0 dispense karmic justice! (or just comment here)  

Jon Stewart Supports the Troops. John McCain-Not So Much.
Friday, May 30, 2008

I'm now waiting for the day when Bush replaces his entire cabinet with Support the Troops magnets. It's time for life to stop imitating art!

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Nothing New byslag at 7:41 PM 0 dispense karmic justice! (or just comment here)  

Thinking...And Media

A few weeks ago at my volunteer gig, I was chatting with a seventh grader about a paper she was writing. Her paper was about the development of Nazism in Germany in the 20s and 30s and how the post-WWI German economy and feelings of vulnerability among the German populace were easily manipulated by the Nazi propaganda machine. In the course of our conversation, I found myself wishing that I had been as smart as this girl was when I was in seventh grade. However, at some point during our discussion, she made an incorrect statement of fact upon which I corrected her. While she didn't argue with me on the point, I observed that she wasn't quite prepared to incorporate the change into her body of knowledge. I thought to myself that if she were older and more sophisticated, she would have learned to hide her unwillingness to embrace the new information by quickly changing or expanding the boundaries of the subject we were discussing. Instead, she just sort of hesitated a bit before she continued on to her point, after which time I took the opportunity to repeat the correction.

This scenario got me thinking about how or when we choose to incorporate new or corrected information into our personal bodies of knowledge. Arianna Huffington is right when she discusses the power of repetition as a means to help us change our minds about something, but repetition, in and of itself, can only go so far. Finding new ways of repeating the same information is where it's at (as my pugilism instructor reminds me regularly). We need to find ways of presenting information that fits into an individual's mental schema, which means that, in order to be successful, we have to have some idea of how they think. And the larger, more diverse, the group of people, we're trying to convince, the more ways we need to find to repeat the information. As someone who hates repeating things, I get exhausted when I think about the job of the teacher/propagandist.

Sometimes I think about the tedious ways in which information is processed in relation to my own blogging, and I periodically examine my own goals and responsibilities in the big, wide world of left blogistan. Do I want my role to be one of philosopher, propagandist, entertainer? Maybe none of the above? How do I incorporate my layman's awareness of how people think into my blogging, and how often am I skipping over the inconvenient facts that are presented to me in the blog comments? Or how often am I dismissing contradictory information when I write my own blog entries? Is the point I'm making clear to anyone but me? And then I realize that if all of these complicating questions are relevant to my own content--when it's just li'l ol' me making the decisions--I can only imagine how important they are in the world of real writers--those who deal with editors and publishers and corporate owners.

Scott McClellan's recent book has a lot of people finally conversing about the role of the media in our society. Not that people hadn't been doing this before, but now, we're happily seeing the individuals in the media joining in on the discussion. Glenn Greenwald, who has been blogging on these subjects for a while now, wrote about a recent revelation by a former MSNBC correspondent:

Jessica Yellin -- currently a CNN correspondent who covered the White House for ABC News and MSNBC in 2002 and 2003 -- was on with Anderson Cooper last night discussing Scott McClellan's book, and made one of the most significant admissions heard on television in quite some time:

JESSICA YELLIN, CNN CONGRESSIONAL CORRESPONDENT: I think the press corps dropped the ball at the beginning. When the lead-up to the war began, the press corps was under enormous pressure from corporate executives, frankly, to make sure that this was a war that was presented in a way that was consistent with the patriotic fever in the nation and the president's high approval ratings.

And my own experience at the White House was that, the higher the president's approval ratings, the more pressure I had from news executives -- and I was not at this network at the time -- but the more pressure I had from news executives to put on positive stories about the president.

I think, over time...

(CROSSTALK)

COOPER: You had pressure from news executives to put on positive stories about the president?

YELLIN: Not in that exact -- they wouldn't say it in that way, but they would edit my pieces. They would push me in different directions. They would turn down stories that were more critical and try to put on pieces that were more positive, yes. That was my experience.

The video of that exchange is here. As noted in Update II below, Yellin today said that she was referring to her time at MSNBC. Yellin's admission is but the latest in a growing mountain of evidence demonstrating that corporate executives forced their news reporters to propagandize in favor of the Bush administration and the war, and censored stories that were critical of the Government. Katie Couric yesterday said that threats from the White House and accusations of being unpatriotic coerced the media into suppressing its questioning of the war...

Glenn goes on to flesh out these issues and provide more examples of how f'd up the media is etc, etc...and all the time, I'm reading and agreeing and thinking, "We all know all this already.
Why are we still having these conversations?". The frustrating reality: repetition.

PS Speaking of which, here's a new way of presenting information intended to correct some of the falsehoods surrounding Barack Obama:

Repeat it up.

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Nothing New byslag at 3:06 PM 0 dispense karmic justice! (or just comment here)  

Back Under their Rock
Thursday, May 29, 2008

Sometimes, one almost feels sorry for the neocons. Here, we have one brave blogger trying to unearth what may be the greatest scandal of our time--whether or not Obama's uncle's middle initial is a T or a W--and he gets no respect. Really, he's trying to find out if Obama is telling tales out of school about his uncle's WWII service (from Sadly, No!):

...Steve Gilbert of Sweetness & Light did some digging and discovered a website dedicated to preserving the history of the 89th Infantry Division of World War II, the division in which Obama’s great uncle served and helped liberate the Ohrdruf satellite of the Buchenwald concentration camp. Seeking to get to the bottom of a mystery that had been solved hours earlier, Gilbert dutifully fired off an email to the site’s owners, Ray and Mark Kitchell, thus setting up the greatest bitch slap in history...

And what kind of response does our fearless blogger receive? What was the essence of said bitch slap?

Please crawl back under the rock you came out from.

Good day

Raymond Kitchell, veteran 89th Inf Div

Apparently, Mr. Kitchell was in no mood to play with our intrepid neocon blogger. Of course, that wasn't the end of their exchange, and after a few back and forths, it looks like Steve Gilbert's commenters are none too pleased with the response that their hero blogger received from that pesky World War II veteran. Here's some of what they have to say from back under their rock:

“Like 90% of this administration, they don’t have the foggiest idea what we went through or what we saw at Ohrdruf.”

Not to diminish anyone’s service, but the 89th only got to Europe in March of 1945 and saw less than two months of the war.

Also, only a handful of soldiers went into Ohrdruf, and from what I have read they were only there a very brief time.

I fail to see why this commenter would be concerned about diminishing anyone's service. As we've seen from John McCain's stance (or lack thereof, since he didn't show up for the vote) on the new GI Bill, it's not their service that we care about. It's whether or not they stayed in long enough to get themselves killed. Because if you aren't in war long enough to be killed, you cost us money when you get back. And no one wants that:

[John McCain] should understand how hard it is for veterans to transition back into civilian life.

John McCain's way of transitioning back to civilian life was dumping his wife and marrying an heiress. If veterans had any love for their country, they would just man-up and do what McCain did. Or simply die in war. It's the American way.

In other words, stop costing us money and not being helpful in your responses to our stupid inquiries about the details of Barack Obama's uncle's past, you anti-American veterans!

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Nothing New byslag at 9:53 AM 2 dispense karmic justice! (or just comment here)  

In Honor of Memorial Day, John McCain Defends a Position on the New GI Bill That He Failed to Take
Monday, May 26, 2008

From the Caucus:

ALBUQUERQUE — In a Memorial Day speech to veterans and their families here, Senator John McCain kept alive a debate about a new G.I. bill making its way through Congress, which he opposes, arguing that his own counter-proposal would be better for the military.

Mr. McCain faced criticism from Senator Barack Obama for opposing the measure to expand veterans’ benefits, but the Arizona senator declined to take on Mr. Obama directly in defending his position, as he did so forcefully last week. Mr. McCain has expressed concern the bill might lead to reduced enlistments.

Question: When a senator strongly opposes a bill, is it not a custom in the senate to vote against said bill?

From the Boston Globe:

The Democratic National Committee accused John McCain of being AWOL from the Senate vote yesterday for a new GI Bill to provide better education benefits for returning veterans. McCain was in California on a campaign and fund-raising trip, while both Democratic contenders, Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, left the campaign trail to vote for the bill, which passed by a veto-proof 75-to-22 majority.

Question: In missing the vote on the new GI Bill, is McCain demonstrating a loss of short-term memory or of moral courage?

So many questions, so little media interest in the real John McCain.

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Nothing New byslag at 4:15 PM 0 dispense karmic justice! (or just comment here)  

Lieberman Concern Trolls at the Wall Street Journal
Wednesday, May 21, 2008

Holy Joe starts his rationally-challenged article with a question:

How did the Democratic Party get here?

I actually thought this was a good beginning. I've often wondered how the Democratic Party could have ever included Joe Lieberman, let alone put him up as a VP candidate. But apparently, that wasn't where he was going:

How did the party of Franklin Roosevelt, Harry Truman and John F. Kennedy drift so far from the foreign policy and national security principles and policies that were at the core of its identity and its purpose?

I agree. How did we, the Democrats, ever let the fear mongers push us into a stupid war with no real moral foundation or path to success? Oh wait. That wasn't where he was going either:

Beginning in the 1940s, the Democratic Party was forced to confront two of the most dangerous enemies our nation has ever faced: Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union. In response, Democrats under Roosevelt, Truman and Kennedy forged and conducted a foreign policy that was principled, internationalist, strong and successful.

Well, there was that whole Bay of Pigs incident. Not to mention the Vietnam War, which Kennedy has some right to claim a part of. And I guess the nuclear bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were straightforwardly principled actions according to Lieberman. But that was such a long time ago, and blowing up entire cities of innocent civilians is an easily forgettable event. I'm sure the few families of those people that remain don't even remember their names anymore. So, it's all good. I digress:

This was the Democratic Party that I grew up in – a party that was unhesitatingly and proudly pro-American, a party that was unafraid to make moral judgments about the world beyond our borders. It was a party that understood that either the American people stood united with free nations and freedom fighters against the forces of totalitarianism, or that we would fall divided.

Hmmmm....being "proudly pro-American" means judging the world beyond our borders while completely forgetting to judge ourselves? I think there's another term for that: hypocrite. And when we talk about "freedom fighters" are we talking Iraqi insurgents? Cuz I think our US soldiers in Iraq may have a problem with us standing united with those freedom fighters. Just a guess....

Long story short, Lieberman's concern troll article is lengthy and not worth all the words he used to write it, let alone all the words required to make fun of it. I just wish the Democratic Party wouldn't put up with his imperialist recklessness anymore.

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Nothing New byslag at 9:52 AM 2 dispense karmic justice! (or just comment here)  

Obama Grants Wishes! Calls McCain "Afraid".
Monday, May 19, 2008

Apparently, Obama is stealing McCain's ability to grant wishes because he granted my wish to see him call McCain out on his big chicken tendencies. From TPM:

McCain said [calling Iran weak compared to the USSR] revealed Obama's "inexperience and reckless judgment." Here's the key part of Obama's reply...

"Here's the truth: the Soviet Union had thousands of nuclear weapons, and Iran doesn't have a single one. But when the world was on the brink of nuclear holocaust, Kennedy talked to Khrushchev and he got those missiles out of Cuba. Why shouldn't we have the same courage and the confidence to talk to our enemies? That's what strong countries do, that's what strong presidents do, that's what I'll do when I'm president of the United States of America."

Obama also said: "What are George Bush and John McCain afraid of"?

Watch it on video in all its glory (and to find out what McCain's really thinking when he talks, just replace his words with "Kokokaw" over and over again in your mind):


More of this please!

Best screenshot ever from TPM:And what do voters think about Obama's recent responses to Bush/McCain? From Gallup:

Obama Opens Up 16-Point Lead, Biggest Yet

More of this too, please!

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Nothing New byslag at 1:53 PM 2 dispense karmic justice! (or just comment here)  

Chris Matthews Dispenses Karmic Justice
Thursday, May 15, 2008

Chris Matthews and I have had our differences in the past. But he earned at least some of his paycheck this evening:

Stupid Neocon Guy: Appeasement ... appeasement ... appeasement ... appeasement ... appeasement ... appeasement ... appeasement...
Matthews: You don't know what you're talking about.

(via John Cole)

The fact that Stupid Neocon Guy has a radio show and is in a position to show his face on the teevee should be a complete embarrassment to all of us. And the fact that our President is the king of dunces such as him makes it even worse. Doesn't anyone have to actually earn our respect and attention anymore?

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Nothing New byslag at 8:41 PM 3 dispense karmic justice! (or just comment here)  

New Brand Looks a lot Like the Old Brand

So, if the Republicans are going to take so much time (and ink) to "re-brand" their party, shouldn't someone let Still President Bush in on the news? From Crooks and Liars:

In an astoundingly ignorant interview with The Politico’s Mike Allen Tuesday, President Bush insinuated that electing a Democrat in November would lead to another attack on America, and revealed that he made the ultimate sacrifice by giving up golf shortly after the start of the Iraq War — the timing of which he lied about. Naturally, Keith ripped into him tonight — with all the anger and passion you’ve come to expect from a Special Comment — for continuing this despicable fear-mongering, and for failing to understand what true sacrifice is.

Wow. Fear-mongering, false martyrdom, lying about war...sounds like the same old Republican Party to me.

And then, from the AP:

In a speech to Israel's Knesset, Bush said: "Some seem to believe that we should negotiate with the terrorists and radicals, as if some ingenious argument will persuade them they have been wrong all along.

"We have heard this foolish delusion before. As Nazi tanks crossed into Poland in 1939, an American senator declared: 'Lord, if I could only have talked to Hitler, all this might have been avoided.' We have an obligation to call this what it is — the false comfort of appeasement, which has been repeatedly discredited by history."

Wow. Political opportunism, linking diplomacy to Nazism, more fear-mongering...definitely sounds like the same old Republican Party to me.

Barack Obama responds:

It is sad that President Bush would use a speech to the Knesset on the 60th anniversary of Israel’s independence to launch a false political attack. It is time to turn the page on eight years of policies that have strengthened Iran and failed to secure America or our ally, Israel. Instead of tough talk and no action, we need to do what Kennedy, Nixon and Reagan did and use all the elements of American power, including tough, principled and direct diplomacy to pressure countries like Iran and Syria.

Well, since some Republicans have, through the branding process, come to realize that their new slogan--Republicanism is the New Prozac--is a non-starter, I have a suggestion for them (I'm feeling very helpful these days). Their new slogan should both speak to the heart of the Republican Party and tell the world how Republicans respond to their adversaries. It should be simple, precise, and honest. Cerebrally elegant but with a touch of down-home rustic charm. Ladies and gentlemen, the new Republican Party slogan:

Kokokaw. Kokokaw. Kokokaw...Chickens don't clap!

UPDATE: Or, if you want to get serious about it, check out Keith Olbermann:

(via The Jed Report)

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Nothing New byslag at 10:46 AM 8 dispense karmic justice! (or just comment here)  

Other People's Genius
Friday, May 9, 2008

* The L-curve displays income distribution in a way that makes it clearer to non-economist me:

The U.S. Income distribution is not a “Bell Curve”…it is an “L-Curve”! On the scale of the football field graph shown here the bottom 99% of the population measure their incomes in inches. The top 1% measure their incomes as stacks of $100 bills feet or even miles high! The total wealth of the few people in the vertical spike equals the total wealth of the rest of the population combined.

The L-curve graphic is a must-see!


* Dday at Hullabaloo makes some good points about Obama's Vote for Change plan:

On Saturday, in over 100 locations across the country, the Obama Vote for Change campaign will roll out with kickoff events all over the country designed to register and mobilize voters. At the event I'll be attending in South Los Angeles, the goal is to register 2,000 new voters in one afternoon. Multiply that out and you have 200,000 voters registered by one campaign in a single day. And that's only the beginning.

[...]

There are a lot of positives to this. The old leadership of the Party has become ossified, and Obama's takeover is an extension of the Dean movement, only on less explicitly ideological terms. To strip a Lanny Davis and a Terry McAuliffe of their power is frankly a welcome development. The figures in an Obama Administration will likely be core figures within the party for the next 20 years. The next generation will be characterized, as Chris Bowers perceives, with a set of more technocratic, good-government advocates, policy types who have a command of their specific bailiwicks, rather than the corporate-friendly DLC types of recent yore. Neither of these are necessarily progressive, but I'd consider the former group, motivated by policy over politics, far more palatable. And in addition, investing in voter registration and mobilization is the wisest use of resources that I've seen in the Democratic Party in my lifetime.

I've stated in the past how getting people involved and voting is one of my pet issues, so this initiative on the part of Obama's campaign is an early War on Xmas gift for me.


* Matthew Yglesias makes sense when he rags on Ed Kilgore's praise of Hillary's national security credentials:

Clinton's "street cred" on national security consists, of course, of being massively wrong on the most important national security issue of her career. Paradoxically, a lot of folks find her massive wrongness on this hugely important issue reassuring because they and their friends were also wrong and they view having made the right call to be a suspicious quality. After all, the Iraq War may have led to thousands of U.S. deaths, tens of thousands of U.S. casualties, hundreds of thousands of Iraqi deaths, and millions of Iraqi refugees all at a cost of over $1 trillion and in ways that's damaged the strategic position of the United States, but war opponents were all a bunch of hippies.

My faint-hearted ambivalence toward Hillary turned into pure loathing when she demeaned Obama's war opposition as "a speech he gave in 2002." This attitude toward anti-war positions has had disastrous consequences for all of us. We simply need to expunge it.


Happy other people's genius Friday!

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Nothing New byslag at 2:42 PM 0 dispense karmic justice! (or just comment here)  

Obama's Secret Weapon
Monday, May 5, 2008

Remember back when the Democratic candidates would talk about foreign policy? Those were the days.

Phone banking this weekend, I encountered an undecided gentleman in North Carolina who said that Obama needed to stop kvetching (my word, not his) about gas taxes and start kvetching about kids dying in Iraq. I reminded him that Obama was the only one of the candidates who opposed this war from the start, and he said that he wanted him to emphasize that more. If I had had my wits about me--and if I thought the guy actually wanted to discuss the issue--I would have suggested that not only do we need to bring kids home from this war but we need to keep them from heading into new wars. Instead of talking about how we would "obliterate" Iran, we need to keep talking about how we would prevent the need to obliterate Iran. In my mind (and possibly in the mind of the gentleman from NC), the ability to actually take war seriously is one of Obama's major strengths. I wish he'd use it more.

Cuz, apparently, there are still kids dying in Iraq. Shhhh...don't tell anyone.

UPDATE: Sam Seder was able to brilliantly turn the idiotic discussion about the "War on Xmas" (back in the day) into a discussion about the war in Iraq:
Making connections and defining the issues is clearly where it's at. For instance, we know this whole gas tax debate is all about Washington politics and, deep down, we know that political posturing is how we got into this war in the first place. It seems like there's some room to maneuver this conversation in a direction we want it to go in.

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Nothing New byslag at 8:45 PM 2 dispense karmic justice! (or just comment here)  

Do You Feel Real?

When over half of the Democratic Party is not considered "real people", it becomes easier to understand why the Iraqis aren't considered real people either. (both links via atrios)

(Jesus Jones video via my ill-spent youth)

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Nothing New byslag at 12:15 PM 1 dispenses karmic justice! (or just comments here)  

John McCain Accidentally Tells the Truth about Iraq
Friday, May 2, 2008

According to John McCain, our war over WMD terrorists Iraqi Freedom is actually a war for oil:

(via Crooks and Liars)

My friends, I will have an energy policy which will eliminate our dependence on oil from Middle East that will then prevent us from having ever to send our young men and women into conflict again in the Middle East. [emphasis mine]

More stuff I'd pay to find out: How do the Iraqis feel about this (now that we have successfully won their hearts and minds, that is)? Would this mean that we'll be giving up on our plans to bomb, bomb, bomb, bomb, bomb Iran as well? Is American Imperialism going by way of the dinosaur (to eventually be turned into oil, also)?

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Nothing New byslag at 5:16 PM 0 dispense karmic justice! (or just comment here)  

In Honor of Law Day, Dana Perino Speaks
Thursday, May 1, 2008

When asked at a recent press conference about the potentially illegal Pentagon War Propaganda Program, White House Spokeslawyer, Dana Perino, had this to say:

Look, I don't...I didn't know...look, I think you guys should take a step back and look at this op...look, DOD's made a decision, they've decided to stop this program. But I would say that one of the things that we try to do in the administration is get information out to a variety of people so that everybody else can call them and ask their opinion about something. And I don't think that that should be against the law. And I think it's absolutely appropriate to provide information to people who are seeking it and who are going to be providing their opinions on it. It doesn't necessarily mean that all of those military analysts ever agreed with the administration. I think you can go back and look and think that a lot of their analysis was pretty tough on the administration. That doesn't mean that we shouldn't talk to people. [emphasis mine]

Well, if Dana Perino, of all people, doesn't think it should be against the law, who are legal professionals to argue? Way to put the legal system in its place, Dana! And let me just say it's quite refreshing to see the White House taking the law so seriously these days. Caring about what they think should be illegal is the first step toward almost starting to consider caring about what actually is illegal. And really, isn't that as close to mission accomplished as we ever need to be?

(h/t psilocynic)

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Nothing New byslag at 10:22 AM 0 dispense karmic justice! (or just comment here)